When Mathieu Léger describes himself as a migrant worker, an itinerant, and a serial artist-in-residence, he is very serious. This spring, the Moncton-based artist’s wandering trajectory has already taken him all over the Maritimes, where his photographic, performance and sculptural works are on display at various venues. An exhibition of new pieces just wrapped at the Saint John Arts Centre, and a portion of the artist’s engraved silver plates feature in “Somewheres,” a survey of emerging contemporary artists living in the Maritimes at the Confederation Centre of the Arts in Charlottetown. In this interview, Alison Cooley speaks with Léger about an exhibition devoted to his series of engraved plates entitled “Sur un plateau d’argent / On a Silver Platter,” which opened last week at Moncton’s Galerie Sans Nom as part of the Frye Festival, a bilingual literary celebration.
AC: Let’s begin with the body of work you’re showing at Galerie Sans Nom. How did this work come about?
ML: The show is called “On a Silver Platter.” It’s a series of silver-plated copper plates, which are engraved with a whole bunch of different things. There are a few sections; there’s a whole section about art. There’s also a section that is about linguistic duality and cultural heritage in New Brunswick between Francophones and Anglophones.
The phrases on the plates are often in Chiac, and they refer to the linguistic space of [the Chiac dialect], which many people are not familiar with. It’s kind of like French mixed in with a whole bunch of English—English verbs conjugated in French, so you can say things like “Je watchais le TV.” It’s quite common in New Brunswick, and it’s becoming increasingly popular in music from people like Marie-Jo Thério, Lisa LeBlanc and bands like Radio Radio.
I’m looking at all these different idioms and situations and identifiers, which I’m then using on silver plates. In my opinion, silver plates are representative of the English bourgeoisie in New Brunswick. The Acadians never really had any silver, of course, because it was too expensive. At one point, there was this English class in New Brunswick that had money and had these plates, and now they’re disappearing. Their kids don’t want the plates, and they’re becoming a kind of cultural detritus.
I kept finding a lot of these silver plates in Value Village or thrift shops like Salvation Army, and right off the bat, I made one plate.
The first one I made was engraved with “best artist ever,” because it was about the frustration of being an artist—especially in a world where, when you’re growing up, they say, “No, no, it doesn’t matter who wins, it’s how you play the game.”
Then you get out in the real world, and it’s totally false. Awards in the art world, all these humungous art awards—the Sobey Art Award, the Turner Prize– all these things create a star system. In some ways it is very arbitrary, because these awards are selected by what is sometimes ultimately just a handful of curators.
AC: Some of these plates also deal very emphatically with history. For example, one of the plates is also engraved with “best déportation ever.” How do these themes of history and identity manifest in your work?
ML: I started using the plates to comment on awards, but then I started addressing the frictions between the two cultures as well. This came about for an exhibition in France in summer 2012, “Anthropographie,” where curator Jennifer Bélanger asked me to do a series of plates that would explore cultural identity. So the deportation I’m referring to is the Acadian deportation.
I thought it would be funny just to make these plates. People talk about the Acadian deportation, and it’s in literature. There’s Evangeline and a few other films in that genre as well. One thing that’s fascinating about Evangeline is that this fiction became a cultural mythology, which a lot of people consider as fact when it’s not. We all know that cultures are built on myths. And artists have a lot to do with that: they can create a fictional account.
Artists like Mario Doucette are playing with that as well—this idea of how you create an identity for a population through fiction. At some point, does that identity become just fictitious? How do you relate to it?
I find it interesting to put “best déportation ever” on a plate. Because it’s Chiac, you would say it in French. We use that phrase, like, “C’était la best band ever.” It’s interesting to see these phrases engraved in silver. It becomes this object, where it’s like “Oh my god, I can’t believe someone engraved this into a plate.”
AC: There’s sort of a contrast between high and low?
ML: There is! Also, there’s the authority of this silver plate. In your head, it’s an antique or it’s something of great value—and then, of course, I find them for $2.99 at Value Village. They’re still precious metals, but we don’t seem to treat them as such, and we don’t treat the cultural provenance that way, either.
Who wouldn’t want a plate that says, “Your Taxes Paid For This Art?”
AC: There are sometimes really pointed and political criticisms in your work, but they’re also funny wordplays at the same time—sometimes very silly or juvenile. How do you deal with balancing that humour and criticism?
ML: Some of the plates are attacking art the way that the general public attacks art, so some of the plates say “Art is Good,” “Art is Selfish,” “Art is Weak,” “Art is Cruel,” “Art Creates Monsters,” “Art is Evil.”
There are also “Best” awards. There’s “Best Chromosomes Ever,” and “Best Mitochondria Ever,” “Best Birth 01975.” There is absurdity in the awards, as well.
Because most of them can be read as very funny, I don’t think the criticism that’s associated with most of them is taken quite as seriously. I have one that says “Fuck Art.” What artist is saying, “Oh, I don’t care about art anymore?”
There’s a huge variety in the criticism. They’re funny, but at the same time, they’re questioning. I’m questioning every aspect of artmaking and the art world, and the place of art within culture. And the place of culture within society.
AC: You are involved in a lot of residency programs—recently you’ve been in Winnipeg, Finland, Maine and Montreal. I wonder if you take a different approach when you’re doing a body of work that focuses on New Brunswick and on Maritime identity? What has your experience been doing this work, versus working primarily from residencies?
ML: I am a serial artist-in-residence. I’ve been doing residencies since 2000, and I’ve done more than 30 residencies so far. Last year I was away eight months, over four residencies. This past year, I’ve already been away eight months on four residencies.
This project actually started during a residency at the New Brunswick Museum in 2012. At first I had seen all the silverware they had in the gallery, and on a trip to Value Village to look for something else, I saw these plates, and I thought it would be hilarious to get something engraved there.
So this is a product of a residency, and it didn’t start off being about Maritime culture, necessarily, or New Brunswick identity, for that matter. It was all about art and awards. And then it became “On a Silver Platter,” which speaks about this notion of France handing Acadia on a silver platter to the English, because they never defended it.
Making art during residencies gives you a tremendous amount of freedom, which is great, but it’s also hard to get out of that circuit. You become almost dependent on planning stuff for the future: residencies are one of the only places an artist can get three months of non-stop production time and research time. It’s like being in the studio full-time, without having to carry a side-job doing something else. It provides that, which is amazing.
ArtsNB, the New Brunswick Arts Board, has some really amazing programs. I get a lot of funding and support from them through various programs that they have. Doing so many residencies becomes problematic because you’re producing so much stuff, and at the end of a residency, you need to find the places to show it. Right now, I’m working on a five-year project of actions and performances in various locations—and it has become work about residencies, because residencies basically mean that you’re a migrant worker. You go elsewhere to do what you want to do.
AC: So residencies are a way to support your practice and support your livelihood at the same time?
ML: Right, it’s a matter of survival. Residencies are a really, really bad habit.
A series of new projects that I started in January 2013, through a sequence of residencies, is all about constantly negotiating these new surroundings. How do you treat always living in a suitcase and then looking around and getting ideas and making work? I’ve always been doing drawing and photography and video, but I’ve also been doing performance art for over 15 years.
The body of work I’m developing around these ideas about residencies is called Methodologies for Tourists. I started taking photographs of performances that I’m doing on location and site-specific work I’m doing during residencies. This work is kind of a continuation of my exploration of identity and culture. Everything comes out of one place, so it’s all related to each other. I’m wondering if this “On a Silver Platter” work is not part of the whole.
